Peter L.
Jensen, one of the founders of Magnavox Company, was
born in 1886 in Denmark. He began working in the
laboratory of Valdemar Poulsen soon after Poulsen's
public demonstration of the "telegraphone" at the 1900
Paris Exhibition. Jensen helped Poulsen develop his
continuous wave arc transmitter that made voice
transmissions from a radio station at Lyngby near
Copenhagen in 1905. Jensen came to America in 1909. He
met Edwin S. Pridham who had an electrical engineering
degree from Stanford and was working for the Elwell
Company. Jensen and Pridham moved to Napa Feb. 22, 1911,
and began a small research laboratory. They experimented
with an arc radio transmitter, adding thicker wires
connected to a diaphragm, and putting a coil of copper
wire between magnets. They made a working model of what
they called the "electro-dynamic principle" for voice
reproduction, and applied for a patent. However, the
patent application was rejected because the magnetic
coil principle was already well-known. They were granted
a patent on their specific mechanism, but were unable to
attract interest from the big companies such as AT&T,
Victor, or Columbia. At the suggestion of Jensen's
wife's uncle, they decided to put an old gooseneck horn
from an Edison phonograph on their device and sell it as
a public address system. They called it a "Magnavox"
(Latin for "loud voice")
rather than a loudspeaker and by 1915 had made
improvements. They made their first public demonstration
in Golden Gate Park Dec. 10, 1915 and another Dec. 25
playing music in front of San Francisco City Hall to a
crowd of 100,000. Jensen and Pridham formed the Magnavox
Company in San Francisco Aug. 3, 1917. In World War I,
the company developed anti-noise and waterproof
telephones for the military. In 1919, they provided
loudspeakers for a speech by President
Woodrow Wilson in San Diego,
and Magnavox gained national attention. But AT&T
dominated public address system technology, and Magnavox
shifted its focus to radio and phonographs. Jensen left
the company in 1925 and founded the Jensen Radio
Manufacturing Co. in 1927, moved it to Chicago, and made
improved loudspeakers with the help of engineer Hugh
Knowles. He resigned in 1943 and later founded Jensen
Industries. He died of lung cancer in 1961. |